Emily Carlin is an eclectic witch, attorney, and mediator, based in Seattle, Washington. She works extensively with the Crone and her specialties are shadow magick, defensive magick, and pop culture magick.

The beauty of pop culture magick is that inspiration can come from anywhere. Any movie you watch, book you read, or gif you scroll past can end up giving you the perfect magickal mechanism for your next spell. Just yesterday I was watching Deadpool 2 and though to myself, “Wow, Domino would be awesome to work with in a luck spell.” So I did.

For those of you who have not enjoyed the absurd awesomeness that is Deadpool 2 or read the comics, let me introduce you to Domino. She is a kick-ass mutant with the power to alter probability to work in her favor and against her opponents. Basically, she’s lucky. Very lucky. That luck allows her to always be in the right place at the right time and for virtually every situation to work out in her favor. Who better to work with in a luck spell?

There are two important things that pop culture magick can add to a working: 1) personal connection, and 2) added power. For many people our connection to our favorite pop culture stories and characters is far stronger than our connection to ancient myths or centuries old practices. Our personal energies are already deeply entwined with our favorite media, so using it in magick links that magick to us even more deeply. Further, pop culture is something we live immersed in every day. By adding it to a spell we bring the resonance of that spell into the currents of our everyday lives, so the magicky doesn’t have as far to go to be effective. It also taps into the vast energetic reserve of fandoms and links that energy to our intent. Pop culture magick helps our workings to resonate more deeply with our personal energies, allows for greater energetic efficiency, and adds power.

For this spell I chose to modify an existing sweetening spell that I already do each week. Sweetening spells are part of the Hoodoo and Southern conjure traditions, designed to bring ease, good fortune, and lessen obstacles in a given situation. For my original spell I would, each Sunday:

Put a small jar of honey (used exclusively for this weekly spell) on my altar

Take a small taste of the honey and say, “As this honey is sweet, so shall the world be sweet to me.”

Light a yellow or gold chime candle and place it on the lid of the honey jar and let it burn until naturally extinguished.

Altering my traditional spell into a pop culture spell was just a matter of changing my incantation and adding a simulacrum of Domino in the form of a Funko Pop figure. My new incantation is, “Domino, Lady of Luck, bring me good fortune. Guide me to make good choices and to be in the right place at the right time. Eliminate all obstacles in my path. As probability is sweet to you, so shall it be sweet to me.” The rest of the spell is unchanged.

A few simple alterations and additions can turn just about any traditional spell into pop culture magick. By adding pop culture that is personally meaningful you can strengthen your connection to a spell as well as adding power. Always be open to the possibility of magickal inspiration and you will find what you need.

Pop culture workers spend countless hours getting to know the stories, worlds, and characters of our favorite media. We learn their energies so well that we can incorporate them into our magick with ease. Our fandoms become a part of the very fabric of our magickal practice. Sometimes, as we’re merrily working away, the creators dare to fundamentally change our favorite bits of pop culture in a way that no longer works for us. What do you do when good fiction goes bad?

There are benefits and risks in working with living fiction: stories that are still unfolding in their medium. The primary benefit to working with living fiction is the liveliness of its energy. A story that is still unfolding has momentum and power that static fiction just can’t match. If the fiction is popular, think the current Marvel movies or Star Wars, then you have not only the energies of the stories themselves but also the popular momentum generated by advertising, merchandising, fan buzz, etc. Living media is huge part of popular culture and pop culture workers can use all of that madness to their advantage. The biggest risk with living media is that its energies can change swiftly and profoundly: characters can reveal hidden details that make them something utterly different, beloved characters can suddenly die, mysterious siblings can appear from the ether (I’m looking at you Buffy and Sherlock), plots can suddenly diverge in ways wholly inconsistent with everything you loved about the media in the first place, the creator has just been revealed as a horrible person in a way that taints their creations...the list can go on forever. Fear not, all of this can be addressed.

Your favorite fiction has just taken a hard left turn off a cliff, what do you do? Embrace version control - the concept of working with a specific version of media. Lots of amazing media comes in different versions. For example, Superman exists in multiple comics, movies, television, books, etc., all of which portray a different version of the character and the universe he inhabits. If you want to do pop culture magick with Superman the first thing you need to decide is which version of him you want to work with. (See Who's Your Doctor for more) This same concept applies when a character, story, or world you’re working with changes. You can choose to work with select portions of your pop culture media. Only like a character in seasons 2-4 of a show? Only work with that version of the character. Want to pretend that a book series ended at book five? Go for it. It’s your magick and you get to choose what you work with.

Version control can most easily be executed through a statement of intent. It’s always a good practice to have a firm statement of intent before doing magick; to say what you’re going to do, why, and exactly how. During a statement of intent you can specify the precise version of pop culture energy you’re calling upon. For example, in casting a time management spell I might call on Hermione Granger, specifically from book three of Harry Potter. In book three Hermione had a time turner to help her deal with her overloaded schedule and was able to accomplish all of her goals while overcoming many challenges. This particular brand of time management skill isn’t referred to in any other book, so being specific about which version of Hermione, with which particular skill set, would be beneficial to the spell. Similarly, if one were to call on Black Widow for personal strength and maneuverability it might be beneficial to specify that you want to work with the kickass version from The Winter Soldier rather than the damsel in distress that got locked in a castle in Age of Ultron. By specifying a precise version of your fiction, you can work with the elements that support your magick while largely ignoring the problematic bits.

It is possible to take version control too far. One of the biggest benefits of working with pop culture magick is the vast amount of energy that pop culture media possesses by virtue of other fans and the general public. When you choose a particular version of a piece of media you can cut off your access to some of the energy that the rest of that media contains. If you only want to work with a version of a tv character that appeared in one episode (think dream, bespelled, or hallucinated versions of characters), you’re not going to have access to the vast energetic stores of the normal version of that character. Rather you’ll only have access to the energy invested by the creators and fans in that particular slice of the character - and not everyone will love it as much as you do. While potentially limiting, strict version control allows a practitioner to work with whatever aspects of pop culture that truly resonate with them, even when it’s problematic.

A more extreme form of version control would be to choose a slice of pop culture fiction and customise it through your own creative works, e.g. fanfiction, fanart, mental storytelling, etc. We all have certain stories we wish had gone differently or characters we’d have liked to see make different decisions. If you want to do magick with one of these alternate (AU) version of a story or character you absolutely can. By writing out or just imagining alternate stories for your favorite character or world you can, in essence, create a thoughtform of that alternative and work with it magickally. The more you flesh out and work with your AU the more energy will be woven into it and thus be available for further workings. This carries the same limitations of mass media energy as working with very specific versions of characters and stories. However, if you write fanfiction or create fanart you have the ability to share it with other fans and potentially pick up the energy they put into your works. Further, the ease inherent in working with (mostly) your own creation can outweigh the lack of mass fan energy in terms of magickal efficiency. This form of pop culture magick is limited only by your own imagination and willingness to work outside the box.

The next time your favorite bit of pop culture media makes a change for the worse, fear not! Take a deep breath, calm your mind, decide which version of that media you want to work with and, at least as far as your magickal practice is concerned, ignore the rest of it. Allow strict version control or the creation of your own alternate storyline to fuel your workings with just the energy you need and none of the angst you don’t. If what truly resonates with you is pre-movie Galen Erso, young Scrooge McDuck, Dark Willow, or movie Rainbow Brite then that’s exactly what you should do. Your magick is just that: yours.

I cook and I know things. I love being in the kitchen as much as I love watching my favorite movies, reading my favorite books, and making magick. However, as a busy person what I love best is finding clever ways to combine those things into a single action in order to save time and energy. Oh yes, I do pop culture kitchen witchery. Let me share with you how I make fun and nourishing treats infused with pop culture magick.

There are nearly limitless ways to infuse magick into cookery. One can choose foods with inherently magickal ingredients; many common herbs and spices have powerful magickal correspondences. Think of the basil, garlic, and fennel in many traditional pasta sauces and their inherently protective qualities. Once can also compose a meal based on the color correspondences of the ingredients; perhaps an all green meal for prosperity. Add baking to your repertoire and you have the option of shaping cookies and breads into magickal symbols that are charge when baking and released when eaten. Of course one can, and should, always add their intent as they create their food; better still if it’s something like bread where intent can be literally kneaded into the dough. These are just a few of the wondrous ways to add magick in the kitchen and there are plenty of resources out there for diving into the rabbit hole that is kitchen witchery. Of course, being the inveterate nerd that I am I take things a step further.

I like to get as much bang for my magickal buck as possible and much of my stand-alone magickal workings involve pop culture magick, so I decided to bring my kitchen witchery and pop culture magick together to supercharge them. One of the easiest ways to add pop culture magick to kitchen witchery is to make foods that appear in your favorite pop culture media, such as lembas bread from the Lord of the Rings, butterbeer from Harry Potter, or fish fingers and custard from Doctor Who. Lembas bread is a great example; it’s already a magickal food, giving the consumer hours of energy from a single bite. By baking a high-energy bread or energy bar and infusing it with the magickal energy of lembas bread you can create an amazing spell for stamina energy that you can take along on a hike, a long drive, or any day where you know you’ll need a boost. Pop culture is filled with enchanted provisions and iconic foodstuffs from Alice’s tea cakes to wizarding chocolate. Take a moment to think about the iconic foods in your favorite pop culture media and the many ways they could potentially be used in magick. Kind of amazing isn’t it?

You can also create an infinite variety of foods themed for and inspired by pop culture media. Kitchen Overlord has a wonderful recipe for a pasta dish where the end product looks like Tony Stark’s arc reactor that would be a fantastic base for a prosperity spell. As you stir your pasta add your intent, let the golden color of the wheat pasta symbolize prosperity, and link to the dish to the energy of Tony Stark’s wealth; take it further by adding a few herbs that both taste great and correspond appropriately like thyme and basil. In doing so you’re using the color and magickal correspondences of your ingredients, adding intent directly through the cooking process, and taking advantage of the prosperity energy associated with the character - that’s a triple charged spell and dinner in one! Similarly, you could make Super Mario Brothers stuffed 1-UP mushrooms infused with energy to ace a test or job interview. Get a few crimini mushrooms, stuff them with ingredients that align with your goals (Google stuffed mushrooms, there are hundreds of recipes for inspiration), charge them as they cook, and consume to seal the spell. The possibilities for this type of magick are limited only by your imagination and what ingredients are available.

Beyond crafting edible spells, you can also create foods as offerings to pop culture entities. Like any other metaphysical entity, pop culture entities often require an offering in exchange for their magickal assistance and what better offering than a food they're known to enjoy? If you were doing a working with Dean from Supernatural it would be a no-brainer to bake him a pie. If, for whatever reason, you wanted to do a working with Deadpool what better offering than chimichangas? Taking the time and effort to make a food offering from scratch adds a tremendous amount of personal energy that many other offerings lack and it allows you to add specific energies into that offering. You can add even more energy by mindfully sourcing your ingredients: making extra effort to get the highest quality ingredients, buying from merchants the character would support, etc. If you have a special working that requires a little more “oomph” for your offering, or you just enjoy cooking, try making something appropriate from scratch.

If you want to try your hand at some pop culture kitchen witchery I suggest starting with simple rolled sugar cookies. If you like to cook you can make the dough from scratch; if you don’t like to cook you can buy pre-made dough at any grocery store. You can find some amazing pop culture themed cookie cutters online or you can cut custom shapes freehand. Try D20 shaped cookies for luck, tardis shaped cookies for adventurous travel, or R2-D2 shaped cookies for computer skills, etc. As you roll out and shape your dough allow your intent to flow into the dough itself. Bake the cookies per your recipe and then continue to infuse magick into the cookies as you decorate. Add icing, sprinkles, or crystal sugars in the colors and designs that correspond to your intent. If you’re more of an advanced baker try making emoji macarons. Infuse your macarons with positive emotions to create an edible energetic boost. In general, cookies are easy, quick, and versatile, making them a fabulous starting point for pop culture kitchen witchery.

Whether you’re making Game of Thrones kidney pie or Welcome to Night Vale’s not-so-invisible corn, pop culture kitchen witchery can enhance your magick and put dinner on the plate to boot. Combining pop culture magick with more traditional kitchen witchery you get all the benefits of traditional practice while layering more intent and meaning into your working, giving it extra power with very little extra time and energy. Make the results of that magick dinner and you’ve made the most efficient possible use your your limited time and energy. If you enjoy cooking or baking and love pop culture then give pop culture kitchen witchery a try.

There are many websites and cookbooks dedicated to recipes from and inspired by pop culture. Here are a few resources:

Over the last few years the use of pop culture in magickal practices has grown by leaps and bounds. As pop culture magick practices grow, becoming more widely accepted and practiced, so does the the need for more cohesive systems for sharing and deepening those practices. In Pop Culture Systems: How to Create Your Own Pop Culture Magic System, Taylor Ellwood outlines some of the many ways that a practitioner can draw upon pop culture to create a coherent and powerful magickal system.

Pop Culture Systems aims to help the experienced practitioner take disparate one-off pop culture practices in a particular pop culture universe and combine them to create a fully developed system of magick. Ellwood defines a system of magic as: “a series of processes and techniques developed by a magician for the purposes of connecting with the divine (in whatever form the divine shows up) and for turning possibilities into reality. The system is used to organize these processes and techniques so that they can be shared with other people, either through books (such as this one) or through classes or in-person transmission.” (p. 19) The beginning of the book covers how to choose the pop culture universe you want to work with and the various elements within that universe that would be specifically incorporated into magick. For example, if a practitioner felt pulled to work with the Firefly universe they would need to examine what resonated with them and why, and how that might harmonize with magickal practices, as well as ways canon behaviors and ideologies might clash with magickal goals.

The middle of the book goes into the details of creating your own system. This is done largely by mapping characters, tools, symbols, locations, and other elements of the chosen pop culture, to magickal correspondences or mechanisms in existing magickal systems. For example a practitioner wanting to work with the Harry Potter universe might map the four Hogwarts houses to the four elements, or someone wanting to work with the Dresden Files universe might map the main characters onto the traditional eight sabbats. This part of the book also touches on ways to create a system based on systems of magic in fiction and gaming mechanics. Ellwood emphasizes that once correspondences have been mapped the practitioner must do meditations, pathworkings, and small magickal tests to make sure the correspondences hold true in practice.

The end of the book examines some of the reasons and ways a practitioner might choose to share their system. Some of the reasons cited include being able to solicit outside feedback, deepening practices collaboratively, and having a way for your system to live on beyond the practitioner’s own personal practice. Ellwood suggests reaching out to mundane fandoms, beyond known magickal practitioners, as a way of sharing a system. The book concludes with a few essays from other pop culture practitioners giving their take on pop culture systems.

Pop Culture Systems gives the reader a quick and easily understandable overview of how to create a system of magick based on a pop culture universe. One of the book’s strengths is its use of a wide variety of fandoms in concrete examples to illustrate the core concepts. With example taken from everything from Lord of the Rings to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, there is something to resonate with almost everyone. Further, while most of the methods discussed seem fairly common sense once read, they’re not necessarily things that would occur to the average practitioner on their own. Ellwood effectively addresses a lot of the complications and stumbling blocks a practitioner can face developing their own magickal system, saving the reader a lot of unnecessary trial and error. While solidly aimed at the experienced practitioner, this book can be enjoyed by newer folks with an eye to prioritizing what they learn and how to begin putting together some of the foundational pieces of a pop culture practice.

For me, there were two main drawbacks to this work. First, the writing style is somewhat repetitive. Ellwood goes over the main concepts many times, and while some repetition is helpful for memory retention it does grow stale. Second, Pop Culture Systems focuses exclusively on systems based on a single pop culture universe. Most of the pop culture practitioners I know work across multiple fandoms, and while the core concepts of the book can be applied to a multi-fandom practice with a little tweaking it’s never addressed. These drawbacks are fairly minor and don’t take away from the validity of the core content.

Overall I would recommend Pop Culture Systems for experienced pop culture practitioners looking to deepen their practices within a specific fandom/universe or those wishing to include others in their practice. The book is a quick and easy read that gets the reader thinking and asking the questions they’ll need to answer to create their own magickal system. If you’re looking to create a system of magick that is all your own and includes the pop culture you love, this is a great place to start.

It’s been a rough summer; honestly, it’s been a rough year. Like many people, I suffer from depression. My emotional and energetic state often reflects that of the people and world around me. In the best of times it can be difficult for me think positively and move forward creatively. In times like these it’s pretty much all I can do just to keep up the illusion of being a fully functional adult. Thankfully, as a magickal person I have a whole host of spirits and allies to help me keep it together.

My personal practice is a unique amalgam of traditional and pop culture practices and when it comes to dealing with my depression it's pretty much all hands on deck. I know there are a lot of people out there with strong reservations about mixing practices. While I can understand seeing mixed practices and pantheons as potentially problematic, I believe it’s all a matter of execution. In my view a sincere practice done respectfully and with the full consent of all participating parties is pretty much always acceptable. It’s not uncommon for me to call on Santa Muerte, Baron Samedi, and Tony Stark in the course of an evening. Yes, I will call on a Mexican folk saint, a Loa, and an Avenger at the same time, but I do not do so lightly. I have strong, long-standing working relationships with these metaphysical beings; we know each other very well. I’ve worked with all of them on their own and have discussed and gotten permission from them to call on them in inter-pantheon situations. The relationships that I have with my allies forge a connection between them, as they all care about me, and make mixing pantheons and practices a lot less incongruous than it would be otherwise. It’s like asking your sibling, best friend, and favorite co-worker to help you move; they may not really know each other but because of their close relationship with you they can probably get along well enough to help you out. I wouldn’t want to call on spirits I hadn’t worked with before in a mixed practice setting. This is more like putting up a craigslist ad for help moving and expecting everyone that happens to show up to get along. Not a great idea. When needs are sincere and explicit permission from the beings involved has been acquired, then call on whatever and whomever will best aid the situation.

Depression is a gnarly and ever-changing beast that manifests differently for everyone. For me, depression can morph its form at any time, requiring different energies moment to moment just to make it through the day. The different entities that I work with on a regular basis all have different qualities that can help me in different ways. This is why I will shamelessly mix practices and pantheons as needed. Tony Stark is my go to ally when I’m depressed because his depression and emotional difficulties manifest similarly to mine. He’s a character that tends to take the world on his shoulders and get beaten down by the big picture while putting up the facade of thriving. That’s pretty much what my depression looks like. I often call on him to help me feel less isolated and to feel understood. I also have a big plushie Iron Man that functions as part talisman, part comfort object - a little juvenile sure, but it helps. I’ll also almost always call on Santa Muerte when I’m not feeling my best. You may not know this, but Santa Muerte gives awesome hugs. No matter what’s going on she’s always there for me with real acceptance and without any kind of judgment. She’s my go to particularly when I need to forgive myself. When I need permission to take care of myself rather than helping everyone around me I call on Baron Samedi. Strangely, or not, death deities and spirits are spectacular at reminding you what it means to be alive and the value thereof. The Baron is amazing at helping me to see the beauty and joy around me and to actually take the time to engage with it; to live life rather than merely getting by.

The aid received from my various allies can manifest in many different ways. Simple conversation is the most common form of aid I request while dealing with negative emotions. Just because you’re calling on a magickal being for aid doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to get them to do magickal work. Metaphysical beings have entirely different wells of wisdom and past experiences to draw from in giving advice as well as offering comfort or support. Witnessing of sorrows and an energetic hug can be as powerful a catalyst for emotional healing as any spell or working. That being said, I often call on my allies to help hold my shields when I’m emotionally compromised. Depression is hell on your aura and can make you a lot more vulnerable to external negative energies as well as sapping the energies you’d normally have to respond to trouble. I’ve called on Buffy Summers a time or two to watch my back when I didn’t have the energy to do it myself. The other main magick I’ll ask for help with while depressed is divination. Depression is a dirty, rotten liar. Depression clouds judgment like nothing else I’ve ever experienced, making clear divination a must when having to make critical decisions under its influence. I’ve called on everyone from Cerridwen to Yoda to guide important divinations to help mitigate the incredible pessimism and negativity that depression brings. Everyone has different needs while dealing with negative emotions, but we must remember that our metaphysical allies care about us and are willing to help.

When times are tough the wise practitioner calls for help. We spend years cultivating relationships with a diverse host of deities, spirits, and other metaphysical beings so that we can call on them when we need them. We must remember that our own mental and emotional health is as valid a reason to call for help as any other. Our allies care about us, want us to thrive, and are willing to help us to do so - particularly when we are unable to help ourselves. Regardless of what entities you have relationships with, take the time to discuss how they would be willing to help you. If you’re prone to depression consider cultivating a few relationships just for aid with it. Then, when the time comes actually utilize those relationships and ask for help. A practitioner is never truly alone, there is always something listening. Ask for help from beloved allies and you will keep it together.

Like many people, I have fallen in love with the new Wonder Woman movie. Also like many people, I am in need of getting myself into better physical shape. I’ve decided that a great way to support my fitness goals is to have a pop culture character to work with as a trainer to help motivate and guide me: thus enter General Antiope.

***This post will contain some minor spoilers for the beginning of Wonder Woman. If you haven’t seen it you, go do so!***

If you haven’t seen Wonder Woman yet, General Antiope is the fiercest of all the Amazons and the one who teaches Diana her skills. Antiope has several characteristics that make her an ideal trainer.

First is her genuine desire to prepare those under her supervision to overcome any obstacles the world throws at them. Antiope decides to train Diana, against Diana’s mother’s wishes, because she knows that someday Diana will have to go up against Ares and that Diana needs to be prepared. Antiope does not train Amazons for reasons of honor or prestige, but out of a genuine desire to keep them safe. I’m not looking to “lose weight” or have a “beach body,” I’m looking to improve my physical health for the sake of having the stamina to actually do everything I need to do.

I am a freak for divination. I love tarot decks, oracles, pendulums, runes, and talking boards of all sorts. While there are a fair number of pop culture themed tarot decks available, they never seem to be for the fandoms I want. My particular combination of fandoms and magickal practices made me realized that I needed to create my own pop culture divination tool. Here’s how I made an effective and personalized oracle using my favorite pop culture characters.